News, views, food, books and other writings, with the assist of character dolls. My art blog, dealing with fine art, exhibits and works in progress, is http://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com.
Please note that all pictures and text are copyright to Liz Adams, and may not be used in any form without explicit permission. Thank you for respecting my ownership.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Woman proposes. Nature and cat dispose.

The endless storms and ice and various natural phenomena which have made our lives one long cancellation in recent weeks have had their effect on the cabin fever quotient. Pretty high in this house.

Urgent need of color other than gray scale

So I decided to make lemonade. Move all the yarn into the studio, move all the weaving and spinning gear into the studio, move all the embroidery items into the studio. Move all the little storage units on wheels containing beads and other art materials into the studio. This involved many trips up and down many flights, the studio being on the third floor. My back insists that my cheerful oh well, this is good exercise, can be overdone, but nemmind.

So after succeeding in getting all kinds of items nicely stowed up there, and getting a few great art ideas out of handling items, I was just settling the little drawers of seed beads in place, when my hand flipped out and knocked them down. This is a little neuro thing that's been with me all my life, sudden jolt of hand with no warning, awkward, but not usually cause for alarm.

This time it created a bead soup out of what had been a nicely arranged little drawer of beads and containers. The jolt whipped the drawer out, dumped it, forced the containers open, and oh dear. But once I'd swept them back into one mass in the drawer and noticed what a lovely mosaic they made, I calmed down.

Meanwhile, back down on the second floor, while I was organizing the next trip upstairs, dear Duncan the big black cat, decided to climb the plant staging to get to the window. Knocking down two large plants, completely upside down, their water reservoirs pouring everywhere mixed with potting soil and broken pots and curses, the plants gamely trying not to cry.

Much clean up ensued. And I had to remind myself 1. it's really hard to strangle a cat and 2. in all his years with me, about 12, this is the first catastrophe, pun intended and 3. such first world problems.

So the shakuhachi effect reigns. The mixed up beads have triggered art ideas. But no pictures. Not enough presence of mind also there was a certain urgency about cleanup.

For new readers unfamiliar with the term shakuhachi effect, it's an attitude relating to the shakuhachi flute, a meditative instrument, which holds that nothing is an interruption to the music of life. Everything fits in in some way, even when it's hard to see that. So better to embrace all the events rather than grimly try to live through them to the other side. It's been a very useful mantra to me over the years.

That pretty much describes my approach/philosophy to life - maybe I should get myself one of those flutes? I once made a flute from a piece of bamboo I brought back from a research trip to Puerto Rice, but I haven't seen it in years. It's probably with my cellphone.

That sounds like what happens to me some times. Everything is going as planned and then WHOOPS it isn't....but love the flute concept for having a positive attitude. Sometimes I get so focused that I forget to just go with the flow and see the joy in each moment, planned or otherwise.